The Alt+Tab menu is a keyboard shortcut that has been around since Windows 3.0. This shortcut is mainly used to switch between open applications. Hence it was called Task Switcher. This has always been a helpful feature for Windows professionals as it allows them to switch between recent applications without needing to use the mouse. This feature is consistent across the operating system and it has always worked very well. That might be the reason why Microsoft hasn’t thought about providing any updates to this feature.

Windows 10 has received a lot of updates from the day of its launch. A lot of new features are now available with the Windows 10 April update. Microsoft is already working on other features with Redstone 5. Some of these new features and a lot of new features that will eventually come in Windows 10 were announced by Microsoft at Build 2018. Most of these features are meant to make Windows 10 users more productive. These changes have also tempted Microsoft to update their much loved Alt+Tab menu in Windows 10.

“Sets” is one of the best features that will be coming to Windows 10 soon and Sets will make use of the new update to the Alt+Tab menu. Sets allow users to have a tabbed experience across apps in Windows 10 just like tabs in a web browser. A particular project may require the use of many applications, so Sets will make it much easier to switch between these applications. But faster switching will be possible by using keyboard shortcuts and not with the mouse pointer. These apps will be present in the same window and with the new update coming to Alt+Tab menu, users will be able to switch between apps in Sets.

Clicking the “+” option on the top of the title bar will open a new tab and will show suggestions to apps that you may need. Clicking on an app will open that app in another tab. This is how sets work. With the new update, pressing Alt+Tab will make it much easier to switch tabs. Pressing Alt+Tab will show all open tabs in all the windows. If there are more than one windows open with many tabs in all these windows, pressing Alt+Tab will show all the tabs in all the windows as small thumbnails and you can move around all these tabs by not taking your finger off Alt and pressing Tab. Removing your finger will open the highlighted app.

Edge Browser tabs will also be able to utilize this feature. Pressing Alt+Tab in Edge browser will show all the open web pages as small thumbnails. Other browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox will not have this feature.

We can hope this update to Alt+Tab will come to the public with Redstone 5 but Microsoft as always prefers to ship it when it is ready.